Aroha – signed, shrinking permissions for AI agents, checked offline

Aroha Labs released Aroha Mandates, a protocol that gives orchestrator agents cryptographically enforceable control over sub-agents through signed, narrowing permission chains verified offline. In the published example, a human issues an IntentMandate to an orchestrator capped at $500 and a 1-hour TTL for merchant category 4511 (airlines), and the orchestrator attenuates that to $300 for a flight agent; a link that widens scope or is signed by anyone other than its grantor fails verification. The protocol works alongside MCP, A2A and identity providers, pushes revocations to verifiers via a registry witness, and issues a signed receipt for every allowed or refused action.

Cryptographically bounded authority for every agent in the chain. Aroha Mandates give orchestrators cryptographically enforceable control over every sub-agent they delegate to. No agent can exceed the scope it was granted. Docs https://www.aroha-labs.com/docs/ · Support matrix https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/docs/support-matrix.md · Local sandbox https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/docs/sandbox.md · Support https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/SUPPORT.md · Spec https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/docs/spec/aroha-1.0.md js import { generateKeyPair, generateDid } from "@aroha-sdk/core"; import { issueIntentMandate, attenuateToPayment, verifyMandateChain } from "@aroha-sdk/credentials"; const human = await generateKeyPair ; const orchestrator = await generateKeyPair ; const flightAgent = await generateKeyPair ; // Content-addressed DIDs did:aroha:z… commit to their own public key, // so a verifier needs no registry lookup to check signatures. const humanDID = generateDid human.publicKey ; const orchestratorDID = generateDid orchestrator.publicKey ; const flightAgentDID = generateDid flightAgent.publicKey ; // Human issues an intent mandate to the orchestrator $500, 1 hour TTL const intent = await issueIntentMandate humanDID, orchestratorDID, { spendLimitUsd: 500, merchantCategory: "4511" }, // MCC 4511 = airlines human.privateKey, 3 600 000, ; // Orchestrator attenuates scope downward to the flight agent $300 of the $500 . // The child token embeds the signed chain back to the human. const payment = await attenuateToPayment intent, flightAgentDID, { spendLimitUsd: 300, merchantCategory: "4511" }, orchestrator.privateKey, ; // Flight agent verifies every link back to the human root before acting const result = await verifyMandateChain payment.token, undefined, { expectedRoot: humanDID, // the human authority must come from expectedGrantee: flightAgentDID, // the flight agent itself } ; // result.valid === true, result.chainVerified === true, // result.mandate?.constraints.spendLimitUsd === 300. // A link that widens scope, or is signed by anyone but its grantor, fails. Agents now act for people and hand work to other agents and tools, often run by other companies. MCP and A2A connect them; identity providers name them. Nothing that travels with the work proves what each agent was allowed to do, stops the whole chain when the person changes their mind, or leaves a record anyone else can check. | Approach | What you get today | |---|---| | Per-hop credentials API keys, OAuth tokens | Each hop enforces its own key. The person's limit, purpose and expiry are lost along the way. | | Framework guardrails | Checks inside one codebase. Nothing survives the hop to another vendor's agent. | | Aroha Mandates | A signed chain back to the person. Scope can only narrow. Any verifier checks it offline; revocation is pushed; every action, allowed or refused, gets a signed receipt. | Aroha answers four questions for every action: who is acting, what were they allowed to do, can it be stopped, and what actually happened. It works with MCP, A2A and your identity provider rather than replacing them. See what Aroha is and is not https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/docs/positioning.md . 1. Human issues a mandate — signs an IntentMandate with authorized actions, a spending cap, and a TTL. Cryptographically bound to the orchestrator's DID. 2. Orchestrator attenuates — delegates a strict subset of that scope to the next agent. The new mandate is signed by the orchestrator. Scope narrows, never widens. 3. Every agent verifies — before acting, an agent verifies the mandate chain back to its human origin, offline. A forged, altered, widened or expired link fails verification. 4. Revoke and prove — the person can revoke at any time; the registry witness pushes the revocation to verifiers. Every allowed or refused action produces a signed receipt. 5. Deploy in your existing stack — bridges for MCP, LangChain, A2A, and Composio. Mandate verification drops in in two lines. Core — the four questions ├── @aroha-sdk/core Identity did:aroha , signed envelopes, receipts, conversation profile ├── @aroha-sdk/credentials ★ Start here — mandates, attenuation, chain verification, revocation ├── @aroha-sdk/delegation Multi-hop delegation with depth limits and stitched receipts └── @aroha-sdk/policy Deterministic limits checked before any model sees a request Adapters use Aroha from the stack you already run ├── @aroha-sdk/mcp-server Remote MCP server 2026 authorization spec ├── @aroha-sdk/mcp-guard Mandate checks in front of any MCP server ├── @aroha-sdk/mcp-bridge MCP ↔ Aroha includes wrapMcp one-liner ├── @aroha-sdk/a2a-bridge A2A ↔ Aroha └── @aroha-sdk/langchain-bridge LangChain / OpenAI functions ↔ Aroha Extensions maintained, optional; developed outside this repository └── orchestrator sagas · settlement · commerce · reputation Tooling ├── @aroha-sdk/cli scaffold · convert · doctor · dev sandbox └── create-aroha-agent npx create-aroha-agent — zero-config scaffolder js import { verifyMandateChain } from "@aroha-sdk/credentials"; // In your agent's request handler. HUMAN ROOT DID is the human you accept authority from; // MY DID is this agent's own DID. The mandate travels in the signed Aroha envelope body // credentialToken ; over MCP it travels in meta "aroha/mandate" with a holder proof // see @aroha-sdk/mcp-bridge . There is no mandate HTTP header. const { valid, chainVerified, mandate, reason } = await verifyMandateChain envelope.body.credentialToken, undefined, // default resolver: content-addressed did:aroha:z… DIDs { expectedRoot: process.env.HUMAN ROOT DID, expectedGrantee: MY DID }, ; if valid || chainVerified { res.status 403 .json { error: reason } ; } else { // mandate.constraints.spendLimitUsd, mandate.constraints.merchantCategory, etc. } Already have an MCP server? Add one import: js import { wrapMcp, registryPublicKeyResolver } from "@aroha-sdk/mcp-bridge"; const agent = await wrapMcp server.listTools , { name: "my-tools", price: 0.01, resolvePublicKey: registryPublicKeyResolver , // verifies who is calling handlers: { search: async args = { content: { type: "text", text: await search args } } }, } ; await agent.start ; // ✓ did:aroha:my-tools → http://localhost:3001 Using LangChain? Call any mandate-aware Aroha agent as a native tool: js import { createArohaLangChainTool } from "@aroha-sdk/langchain-bridge"; const tool = await createArohaLangChainTool "http://localhost:3001", "search-flights", "Search available flights by origin, destination, and date" ; // plug tool straight into AgentExecutor, createOpenAIFunctionsAgent, etc. Using an AI coding agent? Point it at the aroha-integrate https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/skills/aroha-integrate/SKILL.md Agent Skill or docs/llms.txt https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/docs/llms.txt : it picks the smallest integration path for your code, applies it, and checks that out-of-scope calls are refused. Scaffold a new agent pre-wired for mandate verification: npx create-aroha-agent my-agent cd my-agent && npm install && npm run dev → my-agent did:aroha:my-agent http://localhost:3001/aroha/v1 Ready ✓ aroha init my-agent interactive scaffold aroha init my-agent --yes zero-config: picks all defaults, writes .env aroha convert --from mcp --dir . wrap existing agent aroha doctor endpoint check environment + connectivity aroha dev local dev registry + dashboard One-click templates for fast deployment. Note: the Vercel and Cloudflare buttons clone from github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol . You can also copy the template directory from a checkout and deploy it with the platform CLI. | Platform | Button | |---|---| | Vercel | | | Cloudflare | | | Railway | No published template yet; manual setup in examples/railway https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/examples/railway/README.md | | Render | No one-click button Render needs render.yaml at a repo root ; Blueprint steps in examples/render https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/examples/render/README.md | packages/ SDK packages @aroha-sdk/ agents/mock-provider-agent/ Reference provider agent for interoperability tests examples/ Deployment templates Vercel, Cloudflare, Railway, Render examples/sandbox-agents/ Pre-built sandbox agents flight, hotel, weather, web-search, summarizer contracts/ Solidity contracts ArohaRegistry, ArohaEscrow, ArohaReputation docs/ MkDocs documentation site The Aroha runtime desktop app is developed in a separate, private repository and has not been released. The saga, settlement, commerce and reputation extensions are also developed outside this repository; they stay published on npm. | Requirement | Version | |---|---| | Node.js | ≥ 22 | | npm | ≥ 10 | Foundry and Python are only needed for the smart contract demo and MkDocs docs site respectively. Use GitHub Issues https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/issues for bugs and feature requests and GitHub Discussions https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/discussions for questions and ideas, or email the maintainer listed in MAINTAINERS.md https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/MAINTAINERS.md . See CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md commits need a DCO sign-off and SUPPORT.md https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/SUPPORT.md . For security issues, see SECURITY.md https://github.com/ArohaLabs/aroha-protocol/blob/main/SECURITY.md . npm install && npm run build && npm test